FCC Nominee Favors Creative Spectrum Use

At his confirmation hearing this afternoon, Julius Genachowski, the nominee for the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, spoke out in favor of using spectrum creatively for providing mobile broadband. In response to questions by Sen. Maria Cantwell on how he planned to handle decision-making around white spaces broadband, Genachowski said he “applauds the creative use of spectrum,” and went on to laud mobile broadband technology. Whites spaces broadband is an effort to provide broadband in the spectrum that exists between the digital television channels.

Given that the biggest change to the way we surf the web over the past few years has been our ability to do it on the go, his emphasis on finding more ways to use the spectrum is one that is critically important to technology innovation. Combine his attitude with efforts from Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Olympia Snowe to pass a spectrum inventory bill, and we may not have to spend as much time fretting over exclusivity arrangements and high texting charges in the near future, because we can allocate more spectrum to wireless broadband that may not be dominated by the wireless operators.